Primarch wrote:Yes. Put some decent gear on him too. ~4800 strength and he lives through a full run maybe 30% of the time. On players 3+, he dies almost instantly.
Unless there is a new item where strength grants a life bonus or maybe a synergy of a skill that does the same, I don't know why stacking it would be a priority. Damage reduction %/flat, resistances, defense and life are going to improve survivability for harder areas. After that, any procs that provide crowd-control will benefit the mercs high life regen, which only needs a few seconds of not taking damage to fully heal. Unfortunately nearly every source of teleport when struck and on striking have been removed from gear. Hellfire Plate looks like the only one left.
As far as deaths due to multiplayer, it could be that mercs can't handle the increased damage from mobs. (Should mercs scale with player count?) Maybe try skipping the strength stacking and instead improve defense to see if that changes anything.